A Burlesque: The Shimmering Body of Revealing

Authors

Lola Montgomery, SAE University CollegeFollow

Published

2-12-2025

Type of Work

Book

Abstract

A Burlesque: The Shimmer Manuscript is a hybrid critical–creative work that examines burlesque as an embodied methodology and a mode of knowledge production. Drawing from my two decades as a performer–scholar, the work reframes glamour, desire, and adornment as epistemological practices rather than theatrical ornamentation. The project is significant in that it expands understandings of performance studies, autotheory, and feminist aesthetics by foregrounding the performer’s body as an intelligent, sensing, world-making apparatus.

The methodology is creative practice research and archive-driven, integrating backstage documentation, AI-assisted photomontage, and theoretical reflection. The work draws from poststructuralist and feminist frameworks (Irigaray, Deleuze & Guattari, Bakhtin’s carnivalesque) to analyse how performance gestures, costume, and glamour operate as forms of divination, relationality, and creative thought. AI is employed not as a generative shortcut but as a divinatory visual collaborator, extending the “shimmer” — a concept describing moments of perceptual rupture and heightened meaning.

The main outcomes include a complete manuscript structured across four sections: lineage, method, performance, and aftermath. Key findings reveal that burlesque performance generates its own epistemic field, where embodiment, ornament, and affect exceed representational logic. The work demonstrates how glamour and desire function as productive forces that reorganise habitus, identity, and artistic process.

Notes

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Citation

Montgomery, L. (2026). A Burlesque: The Shimmering Body of Revealing, Creo.

Sensitive handling note

5. Readers should be aware that this output contains content with explicit language, hate speech, nudity or sexuality, drug use which may be confronting and potentially distressing to some people.